The 7R's of life: Rules, Roles,
Relationships, Responsibilities, Respect, Resources and Returning Cycles.
1) Rules
Rules are a specific body(s) of information … sometimes
described as guidelines … that we as a group choose to live by. These guidelines serve as the foundation for
governing our living together. These rules can outline very complex
international issues … these issues can differ dramatically between various
societies … everything from traffic laws, criminal laws and the comings and
goings of the social services safety net … to educational systems and a myriad
number of variations on a theme … falling under categories such as social
custom or common law … codes of conduct etc.
History and simple necessity are often the originators
of most social and interpersonal rules. Community or social rules are the
vehicles through which we can begin the task of fulfilling our needs … for
food, shelter and clothing, … Maslow and his triangle … as well
as set into motion a safety element or environment within the social structure
where an individual may from the sanctity from within the construct of the
created social zone begin to search out love and acceptance and move up the
socialization triangle to higher orders of completion.
These Chosen Rules can
set our direction and define our responsibilities to ourselves and with those
that we share the system with…
2) Roles
o
Roles relate to the many
“jobs or masks” we wear within the family and our community.
o
Roles are often determined
according to our community or family needs.
o Please Note: just because it is what the family needs does not make it healthy.
o
The healthy
roles we play provide us with our opportunities for learning and
growth.
o Roles can be channels for expressing the truth about
our needs and ourselves. BUT…
o
The problem in the system seems to be that we
were trained to be who we think we are. All this learning happened at a very
early age. This training, often as not, contributes to the predetermination of the
Roles we will adopt in our life and display in our community as we advance
toward our adulthood. It has a circular
theme … what was learned in childhood is how we will be in Adulthood.
o
Our childhood training often demands that we give
up true self. It is basically a defense strategy. We do this for the sake of
the system and its survival … not ours necessarily. We adapt a grab and run technique for our
needs fulfillment. This is referred to
as narcissistic depravation
Thus we cannot nurture our lost self unless we leave home at least
figuratively. Some of us have to break
ties altogether … literally.
We leave home
by giving up the role that our system demanded we be … for the good of the
system … the scripts and rigid unhealthy roles.
These scripts defined us by what the system needed and not as us as an individual.
This process of giving ourselves up for the greater need
of the system denied us our authenticity, our sense of self and our sense of
self-esteem. Each of us adhered to these
rigid roles out of our misplaced loyalty to the system we were born into. The odd thing is that we got a sense of power
and of being in control from doing this, but this entire process cost us
dearly. To adhere to the rigid role(s) we had to give over our sense of
uniqueness, our sense of self, and the essence of being … just to maintain
membership in the system.
We were born to be
ourselves. Truer words were never spoken.
3) Relationships
Relationships deal with the nature and quality of our
interactions … us with us and us with others … but first us with ourselves.
To form a
relationship we must first be able to relate and understand how to set the
relating process in motion.
Our comprehension of how relationships work (or don’t)
lay at the feet of our parents ... those persons who parented us, Mom’s
relationship with herself and dad’s relationship with himself and their
relationship with each other lays the ground work for our understanding of how
relationships work or don’t work. Once
this is appreciated or imprinted or impressed on us it then plays like a message
on a tape recorder … over and over again.
There are variances that are explained by personality and other outside
influences but basically the parents and their interactions set us in motion on
how we will conduct ourselves during our adult relationships.
To get to the root of the problem it is essential to
plumb the depths of our own psyche and our own past … to release those lost and
buried hurts and pains … then to grieve the losses we experienced.
4) Responsibilities
Responsibilities in one sense refers to the level of
maturity we have reached, or how we handle ourselves both privately and
publicly, and more importantly how we handle getting our needs met … especially
our dependency needs.
Our inter play with other people, and the roles we
choose to fill in the interacting process with them are simply expressions of
our sense of our ability to fill our own needs through inter play with
them.
Often as not, responsibility appears to have something
to do with providing inspiration or leadership to all who come into our spheres
of influence.
M Scott Peck pointed out: Life is what happens to you while
you are busy doing something else.
Assuming the working definition of responsibility is a commitment
to being involved … you with your life … in a complete, full and healthy
fashion … thus being able to fulfill the ways of satisfying your own needs
… it helps to understand the difference between Wants and Needs.
This is an essential
aspect.
5) Respect
This starts with an individual’s Sense of Self. That Sense of Self is a by-product of early child
developmental experiences.
Sense
of Self/Self Assurance has its clearest defining qualities rooted
directly in the time spent and how it was spent with the early care givers …
those people who reflected how the child was viewed during the child’s first 30
to 60 months of life.
It Is True That:
It is a necessity that we must first have respect for ourselves …
it then follows naturally … that we will have respect for the rules we chose to
live by … those we agree to … and conduct our living accordingly and build our
social order around.
On the other hand if we do not have this Sense of Self Respect instilled at a
very early age then ... it is with great
effort and difficulty that we will move through our lives (seemingly) constantly
at odds with our surroundings.
Respect is something that is purely experiential
(subjective) … it can be obtained anytime … First we must know what we are
looking for … then … where to look for
it.
12 Step programs are one of those places to look. Another is a
properly laid out therapy program. The book Iron John asks the question “Where
is the Key hidden”.
One of life’s
conundrums: Sooner or later we get ourselves involved in attempting to make
something happen in our lives that we view as very necessary. The problem with
the attempt is that a necessary ingredient for making things happen is missing.
We need to respect ourselves. If that is missing then our attempts are doomed
to fail. The necessary tools are
missing. The business of recovery is the acquisition of those missing tools for
life. Life is difficult; that much is true, but with tools of self respect and
self esteem on hand, the job at hand will not be “an impossibility” any
longer.
The Basics of the concept is:
People cannot respect
themselves unless they know the truth about what happened to them.
For most of us, the truth of who we are is lost back in
the early beginnings of our life. There were times and circumstances where we
simply had to pretend to be someone else just to maintain our membership in our
families of origin ... It is also very true that our every effort to maintain the
family lie is a painful thing to do. The problem is, every time we build
a (neurotic) defense strategy to protect us from a world that seems to want to
destroy us, our defense strategy becomes more painful than the pain we were
masking. Thus, if this is our only defense against our pain then we will build
another neurotic structure … mask … false self … to protect us from the next
level of our pain and that becomes a repeating pattern until we have no idea
who we really are. Finding our lost self-respect is a prerequisite to
healing. Something a kin to Peter Pan recovering his lost shadow from Wendy’s
drawer. Now we have a place to look
… and a direction to go in.
6) Resources
They are available to us on many levels. Help
will only help if you reach out for it.
It is necessary that you participate and utilize them … put them to work for you … it is your
entitlement … they won’t work unless you
work them. I quote John Bradshaw from Healing the Shame that Binds You:
...methods have been adapted from the
major schools of therapy. Most all
therapies attempt to make that which is covert and unconscious, overt and
conscious. These techniques can only be mastered by practice. You must do them, and reinforce them by doing
them again. They will work only if you work them.
Appreciating Compliance & Surrender
Compliance is motivated by guilt. That is, I will make every
effort to appear to be doing what I need to do while I resist doing the doing. Compliance
is in fact an attempt to surrender without giving up control. It is the attempt to appear to be doing the necessary
without actually doing it.
An interesting fact that I had
to learn the hard way was: denial and delusion can continue in spite of the
acknowledgment of guilt. Guilt can
actually be a way to distract one from the real problem(s); feeling
guilty about what I didn’t do ... is actually mood altering and we can be just
as hooked on the guilt as we can on any other substance or actions. Many of us need a fix of guilt
periodically and will screw up in some major fashion just so that we can have a
reason in the here & now that explains our feelings rather than the real
reason that lay lost in our history.
Please Note:
Compliance and guilt are ways that a codependent has hoodwinked many an unwary partner,
spouse, parent, sibling, therapist or friend.
Some shame-based people tend to seek out and even
embrace punishment. Admitting guilt and
paying for it enhances the denial of what they fear most deeply - quitting
doing ... fill in the blank.
To have quit whatever it was ... fill in the blank ... then the
individual would have to admit that his or her life was out of control ... thus
by admitting that, they are exposed as a flawed and defective human being. No one willingly wants to have their face
ground down into their shame or pain … the conundrum of the whole thing is that
the only way out of the compulsive/addictive shame cycle is to embrace the
shame ... not ignore it or pretend it does not exist.
Surrender: is motivated by the acceptance of shame.
For a codependent, surrender is the first true act of freedom since
beginning their recovery attempt. It is
best embodied in the following:
Talking about our problems, mapping out our
family’s dysfunction is not the same as taking action. Action means that I've let go of control and
I'm willing to listen to someone else and do it his way, rather than my own
way.
7) Returning Cycle
It is actually ... I
suspect ... a universal law that helps maintain the balance of the
universe. The truth of the matter is; most of us have never really noticed this
phenomenon before. We were all just too
busy just trying to get from A to B. The process of returning cycles involves the process of giving and receiving.
o
We get from life what we freely give. But first we must give. The key word there is
freely. Many of us have had to give
and give and give ... but it was done under duress ... and chaos and duress
becomes our way of things.
o
Or we reap what we sow; it is not always apparent
... but sooner or later it comes around. Sometimes it bites us ... and
sometimes it seems to reward us ... but its’ necessity will always come around.
o
But then we have to give it back to life. We don’t
own it ... its’ not ours ... it is something we got from life and it has its
own place in The Greater Way of Things
but it is not ours to own. We may think it is ours but ... we only get to use
it for an undetermined period of time then we must give it back. There is no
real choice in the matter ... that is simply how it works. But we are working within
a time frame that is defined by eternity.
o We must give back
what we received ... that is a primary part of the law ... again but, this is
where we do have a choice ... for the grace
of being ourselves, we add just a
little of our potential to it as it passes through our hands. It has our
character and our talents now attached, then it passes back to the universe. Now
it has just the tiniest bit more energy in it, it has our energy. Why do we do
this? So we can find our sense of pride and self respect. So we can become a Co Creator with the Creator.
Thus, a returning cycle is not a punishment, even though
there are many times when it may seem so. In reality it is the restoration of
creative energy within our own environment ... This can be at home ... in the
office ... at a tea party ... at church ... anywhere where we notice that we
actually have the ability to give, because it
is always there ... the opportunity to give ... we just don’t notice. Where
we don’t have to hide behind our false selves and masks; when we can just be
who we were intended to be, that defines life’s purpose. The energy we give
back is now enhanced by our effort rather than diluted by our resentment. We Now Have A Choice.
Effort or Dilution
It
was observed many years ago that if mankind lived according to the Principal of Returning Cycles many of the rules and laws of man’s world today would
be unnecessary.
